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Page 18 of 20 1979 Stalker
Many people involved in the film production had untimely deaths. Many attribute the long and arduous shooting schedule of the film, and the physical conditions of the terrain where it was made. Vladimir Sharun recalls: | “ | We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Pirita with a half-functioning hydroelectric station. Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larissa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris. | ” | It is suspected that the 1957 accident in the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, which resulted in a several thousand square kilometer deserted "zone" outside the reactor , may have influenced this film. Seven years after the making of the film, the Chernobyl accident completed the circle. In fact, those employed to take care of the abandoned nuclear power plant refer to themselves as "stalkers", and to the area around the damaged reactor as the "Zone."
Apocalypse Now
Although inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the film deviates extensively from its source material. The novella, based on Conrad's real experiences as a steam paddleboat captain in Africa, is set in the Belgian Congo during the 19th century. Kurtz and Marlow (who is named Willard in the movie) both work for a Belgian trading company that brutally exploits its native African workers. When Marlow arrives at Kurtz's outpost, he discovers that Kurtz has gone insane and is lording over a small tribe as a god. The novella ends with Kurtz dying on the trip back and the narrator musing about darkness of the human psyche: "the heart of an immense darkness."
The Warriors
Over two milleniums ago, an army of Greek soldiers found themselves isolated in the middle of the Persian Empire. One thousand miles from safety, one thousand miles from the sea, one thousand miles, with enemies on all sides. Theirs' was a story of desperate forced-march, theirs' was a story of courage... § *Special Mention to : Oblomov and Alien
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